May we Never, Ever Become Like Them

Article by Joharah Baker for MIFTAH. Posted on www.miftah.org… on 03/10/2011

This morning another mosque was burned. This time it was located in a Palestinian village inside Israel, a novelty for Jewish extremists who usually target Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The mosque burning is just the last in a chain of “price tag” measures taken by bitter settlers who are angry at their government and of course at the Palestinians who are always the perfect scapegoat for their fury.

Burning mosques and copies of the Quran and scrawling offensive graffiti across Palestinian university walls and Palestinian homes are a few of the ways Jewish settlers have been waging their own war of attrition on the Palestinians – wearing them down bit by bit, pushing them out inch by inch until one day the very ground they stand on has been pulled from beneath them. That is what the “price tag” policy is all about – settlers say it is a way of taking revenge on the government for even considering the evacuation of minor settlement outposts (major settlement blocs are not even in the picture) but the ultimate goal is to wreak havoc in the lives of the Palestinians on whose land these settlers squat and to eventually drive them out.